Why The Left Won’t Claim Culture-War Victory

Reading Kevin Drum today (a liberal perspective nearly always worth reading!) I found him giving what amounted to a challengeto the Left to own the culture wars. The Left started this fight, the Left has been winning this fight, and (from his perspective) it’s a great accomplishment that should be understood as a nearly unqualified victory in the public sphere, despite a political system that otherwise encourages gridlock and stagnation. It was surprisingly refreshing to hear him willing to say all this in public, even as an act of what might be termed “triumphalism”. There’s a peculiar tendency for the Left not to want to embrace its own victory. It’s almost as if America and the Western Allies, already in the summer of 1945, were still obsessing over fortifying their coastal cities against an invasion of German and Japanese amphibious landing craft. The culture war is the only aspect of the progressive utopian agenda that the Left has won, but the victory seems to be purchased at the cost of pretending that it’s a victory less worthy of celebration than things like the Civil Rights Movement, which itself has left behind a far more muddled situation for millions of black American families.

The idea that Western culture is constantly on the verge of unmaking all their victories and reverting to some sort of Handmaid’s Tale dystopia is hard to retire from the rhetoric of cultural progressives. During the Bush administration, the fact that Bush himself was merely talking about unattainable objectives like a federal “marriage amendment” was proof not of cheap ploys to cheap-date evangelicals, but that such a thing was constantly on the brink of occurring. The central conceit of Philip Roth’s Plot Against America gets revisited every few years as the Left tries to imagine how a single critical victory by some charismatic figure on the Right (most recently Sarah Palin, at least in Frederic Rich’s imagination!) could apply the leverage of political office to instantly upend every American cultural trend and plunge the nation into some flavor of religious fascism. This is the usual high-stilted nonsense — but for the Left, it never quite suffers the stigma of being a conspiracy theory because it feels so plausibly similar to the less-progressive interludes of the past. (Well, along with the plausible deniability of a literary facade.) Yet at the same time, the Left feels utterly bound by a narrative that says that past was full of “good conservatives” where were of a nobler breed than the coarse ideologues who survive the primary cycle today. (Like… former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney?!) None of this adds up, yet somehow all of it seems psychologically necessary.

The predisposition to slowly savor visions of your own defeat, even at the moment of total victory, seems like an essential component of ressentiment. If you feel too much like a victor, it’s sure hard to keep hating those rotten Krauts and Japs enough to demonize them, and then there’s a risk of dismantling the powerful military infrastructure you constructed to wage war against their perfidy. Victory contains the seeds of a more magnanimous future for the victors, even as it infuriates the vanquished. So the Left can only maintain the energy it needs to harness the culture wars as a tool for electoral victory if it constantly denies that it’s winning, by weaving itself a new narrative of encroaching right-wing radicalism that’s eroding the remnants of some Eisenhowerian golden age of nonpartisan unity and cooperation.

Have any of history’s other revolutionaries been so reluctant to celebrate their own revolution? Sure, some of them have been quick to look for hidden enemies of the state waiting to unmake the triumph by contaminating its purity with moderation, but I’m talking about a refusal to even recognize that a revolution has occurred. Imagine a world in which the American citizens of 1962 still despised the Japanese as much as the Americans of 1942, and you’ll have a sense of the paradoxical political world which the Left currently sees a political advantage in trying to sustain. Well, except that for all the awful xenophobia of organizing around the hatred a remote “Other” like the people of a foreign nation, such an approach toward political mobilization still doesn’t seem as threatening to the cohesiveness of a free republic as when the “Other” meets in a church right down the street from your house.

A clip from the Drum piece:

Conservative Christians who feel under attack may be partly the victims of cynical politicians and media moguls, and a lot of their pity-party attempts at victimization really are ridiculous. But their fears do have a basis in reality. To a large extent, it’s the left that started the culture wars, and we should hardly be surprised that it provoked a strong response. In fact, it’s a sign that we’re doing something right.

As far as I’m concerned, the culture wars are one of the left’s greatest achievements. Our culture needed changing, and we should take the credit for it. Too often, though, we pretend that it’s entirely a manufactured outrage of the right, kept alive solely by wild fantasies and fever swamp paranoia. That doesn’t just sell the right short, it sells the left short too. It’s our fight. We started it, and we should be proud of it.

I think Drum is right, of course. As Edward Hamilton avers, one big reason the left keeps winning is it believes itself always to be on the verge of losing, and presents itself as the forever underdog. As long as a fundamentalist Baptist draws breath anywhere in this country, the left will see itself as the underdog.

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92 Responses to Why The Left Won’t Claim Culture-War Victory

It’s funny to read how many of the above comments confirm exactly the point Drum was making.
All you have to do is look at the social attitudes of the Millenials. In recent polls the only issue they seem to be a little less liberal on than their Baby Boomer parents is abortion. Scientific advances in ultrasound technology, and medical care for premature babies has probably contributed to that. When the Millenials reach middle age and take power Progressive social ideas will be solidified and the unquestioned norm.

What makes Drum think that the Left started the so-called Culture War? I’ve always viewed the Culture War as an invention of social conservatives.

There’s no need to celebrate because the progressive side because they’ve always viewed their position as the one that’s consistent with our civic commitments. It’s been a War for social conservatives because they’ve had to convince people that bigotry, restriction, and inequality are higher virtues than human dignity, freedom, and equality. That’s a tough sell.

1) For the average US population has the values of second term Clinton. Economic right center, Socially left center. To put simple less government in their lives.

2) Conservatives are too willingly to support failing wars. The biggest losses in the cultural war came in the aftermath of Vietnam (Yes, that was started by a D but Nixon wanted peace with honor.) and Iraq. All social conservatives should be Dan Larison.

3) The Reagan Revolution economy needed the positive impacts of cultural war. They need the two income family model and the destruction of factory towns for the Reagan Revolution. This broke the traditional family and broke the historical local social controls.

Glaivester, if you really believe the muddy middle of the political spectrum is slowly coming around to supporting SSM because the left has convinced them “that there are no real differences between men and women, that the average lifestyle of the male homosexual is exactly the same as that of the male heterosexual,” you’re battling with phantoms.

“You are aware, right, that American women are about as likely to support legal restrictions on abortion as men are?”

I’d love to see the polling on that. I have to say, though, that it doesn’t match the exit polls I’ve seen. I’m guessing the restrictions you’re referring to are fairly obvious third-trimester stuff.

Two things:

1. I’ve never been to Santa Monica in my life, I live in a rural red state. I don’t drink coffee, either.

2. Though it was crudely stated, you’re right about the “wanting to live responsibility-free” part. If I got a woman pregnant, the two of us would talk about how to handle it…I can’t imagine anything more “big government” than someone else making that decision for us.

If the right became more aggressive in this area, the majority of American women would rise up and stamp the pro-life people out of existence. If the right continues messing with abortion and birth control, we may just see Hillary try to do that.

How is the right “messing with” birth control? (I won’t argue with you on the abortion point, as there actually have been some advances on the right). Their only argument has been that places that have moral objections to birth control, or to certain forms of birth control, should not be required by the federal government to pay for them or to pay for coverage for them. This was pretty much the status quo up until some of the Obamacare mandates went into effect.

This is typical leftist dishonesty; if you aren’t gaining ground, or are not gaining it as quickly as you wish, then something is being taken away from you.

It’s the same attitude that makes Bobby say that the right started the culture war because we didn’t simply give in to all of the changes the left wanted to make, or that says that the passage of anti-same sex marriage amendments heralded the start of a new theocracy, when in reality the fact that states felt that they had to specifically ban same-sex marriage was a huge leftward shift from the previous status quo where “men cannot marry men, women cannot marry women” went without saying.

It seems to me that the problem is fear on both sides of the divide. Both sides are demanding overwhelming protection from the other, and both sides are frightened by the protections the other side is demanding.

Here’s an analogy. Suppose you had a neighbor with whom you had a history of conflict. Both you and your neighbor have a gun. Now your neighbor goes to court and asks for a restraining order that says you have to give up your gun, but he gets to keep his. Wouldn’t you be terrified? Both sides in this conflict see themselves as the guy who is being asked to disarm.

Reasonable people on the left would agree that it’s really no big deal if the religious baker doesn’t bake the gay marriage cake. Reasonable religious conservatives would agree that the nurse in Florida who forced a lesbian to die alone (because allowing the dying woman’s partner to comfort her went against the nurse’s religious beliefs) was out of line. (This actually happened in 2007.) The problem is that each side is so terrified of what the other may do that religious conservatives are demanding laws that would let the Florida nurse do it again, and the gay rights side are demanding laws that would crush the baker.

What I hear in this post is the idea that the success of the pro-gay side has been so complete that the pro-gay side should completely and unilaterally disarm, while allowing religious conservatives to keep all their weapons. I don’t think this is reasonable for several reasons.

First, because the success of the gay rights side has been so recent it’s impossible to know if it’s stable. Economic liberals won incredible victories in the 1930s, and again in the late 1960s-early 1970s and it really looked like poverty could be defeated. The gains of the 1970s were rolled back in the 1980s, and we’re now seeing the gains of the 1930s rolled back. There are a LOT of people in this country who would like to see the 1950s return, where gays could be fired, jailed, etc. and even (in Britain) forced to undergo “treatment” to feminize their bodies.

Second, because the persecution of gays is not that long ago, and many people living today remember it. I twice saw people put on layoff lists in the 1980s and was later privately told it was because they were gay. I myself was nearly fired in 1977 for an incorrect suspicion that I was a lesbian. Military people were fired in large numbers during the Bill Clinton administration (which in the case of older gay personnel meant they lost their pensions). Bullying of gay kids is still common. When things have been that bad that recently, people are going to be afraid.

The solution is not unilateral disarmament by either side. The solution is to write laws reasonably (what a concept!) to give a religious exemption to the orthodox baker but not to the nurse. (Maybe we allow the nurse to refuse to personally admit the dying lesbian’s partner to the room, but she has to refer the case to someone else who will.)

I’m sure our gracious host would never have forced the lesbian to die alone. But I think, RD, that you are failing to realize that if we have blanket religious exemptions from every legal and professional obligation there are people who will do exactly that. (And they might not be religious- they might simply be cruel, and using religion as a cover.)

Let’s not forget that the Supreme Court also said that states could not require people registering to vote to prove that they are citizens eligible to vote. Our system is wide open to voter fraud due to Motor Voter, and the left seems to be celebrating that.

In a country of 300 million people, 150 million voters and elections every two years, you can only find one proven case voter fraud?

“The Right started the culture wars. The Right certainly escalated them, such as the various 2004 state drives against gay marriage. “

Uh, if you have an institution that has been between the different sexes forever, and suddenly one group wants to change that, they are the aggressor. The state drives against homosexual couples getting certified as being exactly the same as the natural ‘breeding pair’ for our species were reactions to the aggression.

When you see how so many commenters here take such pleasure in expressing their disdain for everyone who disagrees with them, it’s easy to see why the culture wars won’t end. It’s simply too much fun to have someone to feel superior to.

Glaivester, I think you missed MY point. I was responding to the question at the head of Rod’s post, not to Drum’s column.

What Rod’s question meant was informed by Drum’s column, so no, I didn’t.

Again, your answer misses what was being asked. The people asking why the left does not declare culture-war victory was obviously operating under a definition of culture war that does not include things like Medicaid expansion; no one was suggesting that the left declare victory on economic issues.

It’s rather like someone asking why the NRA does not declare victory for gun rights, and being told “because we do not have a flat tax yet.”

“As Edward Hamilton avers, one big reason the left keeps winning is it believes itself always to be on the verge of losing, and presents itself as the forever underdog.”

I haven’t read any other comments yet, but this is true of presidential elections, as well. The manner in which the Republicans ran the presidential elections of McCain and Romney was pathetic. They left many hot issues on the table, but the Left didn’t do that for McCain or Romney. I think the campaign against Romney was especially shameless. For some reason, Republicans think you can leave touchy topics off the table. Sorry, but if you don’t use all the ammunition you have, in one way or another, you’re probably not going to win if you’re going against a strong opponent.

In a similar vein, this is true for the U.S. budget also. We should always be extremely diligent with the way we spend taxpayer dollars and be very careful not to waste them. Spend as though we need to be careful with every dollar. Careless spending breeds careless policies.

“You go tell a 50 year old upper middle class woman that her 17 year old pregnant daughter cannot have an abortion and watch the sparks fly.”

Meh. The upper class will always be able to obtain abortions for their teenage daughters, whether or not it is legal, and they know it.

If you really want to see the sparks fly, though, go tell the upper-class woman that her taxes are going to be used to support all those babies born to unwed poor women once abortion is illegal. That’s when true colors on abortion will show.

Just about *every* poll that’s been done on the issue indicates that women and men don’t particularly differ on the matter of abortion. Women tend to feel more strongly about the issue- they are more strongly pro-life as well as more strongly pro-choice- but the balance of pro-choice vs. pro-life doesn’t really differ.

In some polls, women may be a couple percentage points more pro-choice than men, but in those cases it’s much more likely that political affiliation is causing difference (i.e. women are more likely to be Democrats and support abortion rights out of tribal affiliation rather than on the merits). In the last election, women in Colorado favoured Obama by an 8-point margin over men, but supported abortion rights by only a two-point margin.

I expect to see Ampersand and Falconer bleating about how all the women they know are pro-choice, or would be if they or their daughter ‘needed’ an abortion. To which I’d respond with my usual response:

1) Unless your health is threatened, you don’t *need* an abortion. You just want one. Big deal. My niece wants a pony.
2) Please don’t assume that everyone is as morally vacuous as you may be. The fact that we have so many unplanned births in America is in itself proof that many women who get pregnant without desiring to, are civilized enough not to murder their child.
3) You need to broaden your circle of women acquaintances. Preferably moving outside the abortion rallies, NOW circle-jerks, and Ivy League English departments.

“How is the right “messing with” birth control? (I won’t argue with you on the abortion point, as there actually have been some advances on the right). Their only argument has been that places that have moral objections to birth control, or to certain forms of birth control, should not be required by the federal government to pay for them or to pay for coverage for them”……………

The Right and the pro-life movement has actively sought to outlaw contraception or restrict it for everyone, regardless of who is paying. The Plan B morning after pill was held up for year due to their political pressure and machinations. The approval delays had nothing to do with science. A variety of “unborn right” personhood type bills around the country in recent years would ban most forms of contraception.

[NFR: Nonsense on stilts. The pro-life movement has only sought to restrict or outlaw abortifacient contraception. Virtually no one wants to outlaw the Pill, condoms, or the rest. Or if they do, they aren’t making it a priority, because they know it has no chance of success. — RD]

Glaivester, my last try: My fundamental point is that in the larger scheme of things the “victory” over the cultural issues is trivial compared to the losses suffered, let along the gains yet to be won, by liberals on the far more important and fundamental economic issues. Furthermore – and this is where you are being disingenuous – at some point the distinctions between “cultural” and “economic” are artificial: Deliberate policy decisions by large segments of our leadership that lead to the suffering and even death of poor people by denying them health coverage is not just an economic issue; it is very deeply cultural as well. But I’m done commenting on this point here.

“In a country of 300 million people, 150 million voters and elections every two years, you can only find one proven case voter fraud?”

I’ve never understood why the Left — other than for cynical reasons, i.e. riling up the black base by claiming the GOP is reinstituting the poll tax — is so against securing the ballot against fraud. Mexico, whose citizens are so beloved by the Left, requires a special voter ID card (with photo), which takes 2-3 forms of other ID to obtain.

@Mike:Well,there are states where once the GOP controlled the governorship & the legislature that abortions have been effectively banned or made very difficult to obtain. The Dakotas are two such states.

That’s untrue. North Dakota, for instance, has three out-of-state physicians who fly into the state. The one abortion clinic in that state was recently party to a settlement in a federal lawsuit over ND’s new abortion law requiring abortion-performing doctors to have local hospital privileges.

Alan Guttmacher Institute claims about 1200 abortions per year in ND. For a state of about 700,000 people, that’s not a negligible rate.

Re: A variety of “unborn right” personhood type bills around the country in recent years would ban most forms of contraception.

Do you have the slightest bit of evidence for that?

There is no evidence that contraceptive pills (even emergency contraception) inhibit ovulation, and even if they did, slight increases in the risk of implantation failure are not the same, morally speaking, as actively taking steps to destroy the embryo. Please google ‘double effect’. If they were equivalent, we’d have to ban breastfeeding as well.

m_young,
Voter ID laws as written do very little to prevent vote fraud– they mainly just try to prevent voting by the “wrong” citizens. The place to prevent fraud is not at the polls on election day, but during the registration process. Every registration should be accompanied by an SS# (with an accommodation for the small number of valid voters like the Amish who do not participate in in SS). This should be checked against the SSA database, and the death index. Any discrepancy– and there are errors in those databases– and the registrant should be contacted PROMPTLY and allowed to prove identity by other means (i.e., a government issued ID).
All in all though the evidence is exceedingly slender that there’s any real problem with fraudulent voting– it’s simply too hard and takes too many fraudulent people to have any effect on elections. The real danger is during the vote counting process. That’s where efforts to secure elections really need to focus.

Re: The pro-life movement has only sought to restrict or outlaw abortifacient contraception.

Maybe, but in too many cases they define “abortifacient” as virtually any contraception, ignoring medical evidence and making up their own.

Abortion needs to defined as the deliberate termination of a known pregnancy. That would eliminate stuff like crusades against the Pill and attempts to prosecute women for accidental miscarriages. The latter especially is an outrage and should get those pushing for it tossed out of any definition of “rational politics”

Charley, you may be right, but a business owner making an informal verbal claim to a legal right that does not exist in statute or jurisprudence, while affirming that she does not intend to exercise such a right (wise choice!) hardly rates as cause for alarm. She wasn’t being threatened with a boycott for committing an illegal act, but for expressing an unpopular (in the immediate neighborhood) opinion.

The later comments are starting to remind me of the reputation of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), that “participatory democracy” meetings went on forever, and the nightowls decided everything by the time a vote was taken. How did this get into a tit for tat on abortion? Oh, yes, anything about “culture wars” devolves into either a rehash on abortion or on gay marriage or on whether conception as a product of gay marriage should be aborted.

Darn, even Hector skipped over all the class issues. Well, I wandered back into the meeting at 3:00 am, so I guess I can’t complain.

In some polls, women may be a couple percentage points more pro-choice than men, but in those cases it’s much more likely that political affiliation is causing difference (i.e. women are more likely to be Democrats and support abortion rights out of tribal affiliation rather than on the merits).

That’s a classic case of causation and correlation. In this case, are more women pro-choice because they are Democrats, or are more women Democrats because they are pro-choice? And how did Democrats get a monopoly anyway? At my mother’s memorial service, I placed some emphasis on her many years of service to (a) the Republican Party, and, (b) Planned Parenthood.

You want culture wars? I’ll give you culture wars. My mom was a delegate to a state GOP convention where some delegate shortly before closing proposed a resolution endorsing the Ten Commandments. Another delegate sitting near my mom whispered “Won’t the Jews be offended?”

Roe v. Wade makes sense precisely because there is no overwhelming consensus on abortion. If 90 percent of the population agreed that it is always and everywhere an act of homicide of an integral and independent human being with rights independent of anyone else’s, it would be so defined by law, and the law would be effective. But there is no such consensus.

Glaivester, my last try: My fundamental point is that in the larger scheme of things the “victory” over the cultural issues is trivial compared to the losses suffered, let along the gains yet to be won, by liberals on the far more important and fundamental economic issues.

Which doesn’t answer the question of why liberals act as if they are on the losing side of the issues where they are achieving victory, instead of focusing on the more fundamental economic issues where their victory seems far less assured.

Furthermore – and this is where you are being disingenuous – at some point the distinctions between “cultural” and “economic” are artificial: Deliberate policy decisions by large segments of our leadership that lead to the suffering and even death of poor people by denying them health coverage is not just an economic issue; it is very deeply cultural as well.

Except that neither Drum nor Dreher has suggested that the left declare victory on health care, joblessness, a living wage, or any of those issues. I’m not being disingenuous; I’m pointing out that if you include those issues as part of the culture war, you are referring to something different than what Drum and Dreher were saying the left should declare victory on.

In a country of 300 million people, 150 million voters and elections every two years, you can only find one proven case voter fraud?

You are missing the point. I am not using her case to prove that voter fraud exists. I am pointing out that the people who are fighting against “voter suppression” lauded someone who was a known vote fraudster.

And while you can make arguments against voter ID laws, pointing to the right’s support of them as obvious prima facie examples of the right’s evil suppressive tendencies strikes me as a bit rich.

You means just like Poland started World War II, by firing on the German army when it invaded?

The Right certainly escalated them, such as the various 2004 state drives against gay marriage.

You act as if gay marriage was a recognized right up until the Right started chipping away at it in 2004. The fact of the matter is, almost no one actually thought of two people of the same sex being married as anything but a punchline until perhaps the mid-80s, and the first state to recognize same-sex marriage occurred in 2004.

This is where I find the left disingenuous. They see any resistance to their revolution as aggression.

This business of the Culture Wars would appear to confuse two separate phenomena. The first is the politicization of social concerns, principally over abortion and to a lesser extent that of anxiety of the family. This was the war of 1980-95 or so. This was also the war that was defined and plumbed by folks such as James Davison Hunter. For the left, that was a disorienting time as family issues became wedge issues and a Democratic Party hegemony broke up. Off hand, I would give the victory to the Right on this one.

The Second Cultural War lasts from 1995 – 2006. This is the great political battle, where social conservatives became the foot soldiers of the GOP. This war was something of Phyrrhic victory for the Right. The brutal campaigns of 2002, 2004 used state-level DOMA constitutional amendments coupled with abusive patriotism. The Cultural warriors won, but the children fled.

In 2008 our Third Cultural War began. We might call this the Southern Crusade. In the sense that no one really expects that Southern sensibility to take hold in the Yankee east or far West, then yes, the liberals have won.

But what has also happened is this: the egalitarian society of the post WW II era vanished from us. The common language of a broad faith vanished from us. Much of the so-called culture wars might be better considered as wars of anxiety, the masque of a loss of community, the loss of self-possession, and yes the loss of an economic future. I think it impossible to speak of the culture wars without understanding the erosion of these other values. Rod’s flight to Louisiana is a metaphor of what so many have lost, the drying out of our social connections. The one evil of the cultural wars, its principal evil, has been this dessication, this desertification of common social life.

Liberal Democratic politics runs on the adversary system. Positions where there are significant divisions among the populace divided into parties who argue for one or the other side. They never change their side, any more than a defense attorney is going to suddenly decide “You know, the evidence is so overwhelming, I’ve decided to switch sides and help the prosecution convict my client.” That’s just the way the system works, and there’s not much use complaining about it.

But what is odd, is that in the trial system, there’s supposed to be an unbiased jury that assesses the two sides. Voters are supposed to be that unbiased jury in the electoral system. But so many voters don’t want to be jurors, they want to join the prosecution or the defense.

It’s an interesting thought experiment, what if elections were organized so that you could EITHER play on a side (run for office, be a volunteer, give money, knock on doors) or be an impartial arbiter (i.e. vote), but not both.

It’s my own feeling that the spread of partisanship into the ordinary voters is one of the significant down-sides of liberal democracy, both in terms of how it influences the system’s functioning, and how it generates harmful passions. But there’s no solution I can see.

Re: In this case, are more women pro-choice because they are Democrats, or are more women Democrats because they are pro-choice?

Well, women Democrats are more pro-life than men Democrats, and women Republicans are more pro-life than men Republicans, so that would seem to indicate something. As for why women vote more Democratic than men, that’s easily answered based on psychological gender differences. The Democrats are the more ‘compassionate’, more centrist, and more long term oriented party (think of things like the environment), and all those things appeal to women.

Women generally tend to be less socialist than men: in countries where the left is hard-core socialist and the right is Christian-Democratic, women generally favour the right. Salvador Allende would have won the presidency of Chile twelve years earlier if only men had been allowed to vote.

Also, I skipped over the class issues since this post was specifically about the culture war.

Glainvester says: “It’s the same attitude that makes Bobby say that the right started the culture war because we didn’t simply give in to all of the changes the left wanted to make.”

My point is that the so-called “Left” is not driving the outcome of the Culture War. Rather, it’s being driven by rational advances in science and technology. The main reason why abortion has become less popular lies with advances in ultrasound technology.

Social conservatives aren’t just fighting the “Left”; they’re also fighting the truth. And eventually the truth prevails over lies. Social conservatives aren’t just people who hold to traditional values. Our institutions, by their implicit logic, have traditionally favored the interests of heterosexual white men. People don’t favor traditionalism for its own sake. Rather, they favor it because they like the way it picks winners and losers. In short, they believe that heterosexual white men are of more inherent worth than other people and therefore favor social constructs that privilege heterosexual white men at the expense of everyone else. After all, social institutions have no inherent meaning; they are just tools for distributing power and privilege.

Much of the “science” that once gave credence to racism, sexism, and heterosexism has been debunked, leaving us with no rational reason to privilege heterosexual white men at the expense of everyone else.

Actually, if a “personhood” law were upheld as Constitutional, it would require banning the most common forms of oral contraceptives because it contains an abortifacient. Without the abortifacient, contraceptives are only effective about 95% of the time. So, you need the abortificaient to push the effectiveness closer to 100%.

So, when someone says that they believe that legally protectable life starts at conception, they necessarily want to ban he most common forms of oral contraceptive.

The Right certainly escalated them, such as the various 2004 state drives against gay marriage.

You obviously missed the 90’s where a chunk of states passed amendments banning homosexual marriage and Congress passed DOMA to prevent states from being forced to recognize those marriages from other states.

Instead of working through the legislative process, the Left went to their old friends, judges. That is what escalated everything. That and a relentless media blitz.

Well, women Democrats are more pro-life than men Democrats, and women Republicans are more pro-life than men Republicans, so that would seem to indicate something.

It would be more feasible to evaluate this assertion if you provided numbers. At first glance I wonder how it is possible that more women are pro-life in BOTH parties, yet polls show that women and men don’t differ significantly on the subject.

Women tend to be less socialist than men… I would add the caveat, in countries where prominent religious institutions support the political right-wing or non-socialist parties. Women tend to be more active in their religious life and more devout than men, which was true in the 19th and 18th centuries, not merely the late 20th.

Our institutions, by their implicit logic, have traditionally favored the interests of heterosexual white men.

However, those are three different criterion, each of which should be evaluated on their own merits.

“White” is a chimaera,” having no substance.

“Men” are distinctly and indubitably different from “women.” At one time, there were deep-set uproven assumptions that men were competent at certain things, women at others, and never the twain shall meet. There turns out to be rather little merit to the notion that women are constitutionally incapable of being senators or engineers or doctors, but we are just beginning to learn that there ARE subtle differences in preference and aptitude, and maybe not so many women WANT to be engineers.

Heterosexuality is the biological and statistical norm for the human species. It has a significance that homosexuality simply doesn’t. Unilateral gay activists aren’t merely fighting “the neanderthal right,” they are also fighting inconvenient truths. And eventually the truth prevails over comforting delusions. That, of course, is no reason to march on someone’s home with torches and pitchforks because “they’re gay,” or turn down a perfectly qualified individual for a job.

Voters are supposed to be that unbiased jury in the electoral system.

Nonsense. Jurors are finders of fact in a legal inquiry. Voters are not determining the truth, they are deciding what sort of policy they want their government to pursue. Its not a matter of truth. Don’t conflate the judicial process with the electoral process.

Re: At first glance I wonder how it is possible that more women are pro-life in BOTH parties, yet polls show that women and men don’t differ significantly on the subject.

Because women are significantly more D than R.

Re: Without the abortifacient, contraceptives are only effective about 95% of the time. So, you need the abortificaient to push the effectiveness closer to 100%.

I need a cite that any common form of oral contraceptive has an abortifacient effect. My understanding is that the studies have found no evidence that either normal oral contraception nor emergency contraception (morning after pill) inhibits implantation to any significant degree, though it is hypothesized that they might.

Contraceptives are of course not 100% effective, and never have been.

Re: So, when someone says that they believe that legally protectable life starts at conception, they necessarily want to ban he most common forms of oral contraceptive.

Nonsense. Even if oral contraceptives did increase the risk of implantation failures, engaging in a somewhat risky behavior is not the same thing as deliberately taking a like. If it was, we would need to ban driving.

How can there ever be a truce when “science” conveniently backs up every agenda item the left wants to proscribe. And capital T truth is only on the side of the leftists. Seriously that is a caricature of what hysteric partisans think, not an actual way to think about politcal conflict.

“People don’t favor traditionalism for its own sake. Rather, they favor it because they like the way it picks winners and losers. In short, they believe that heterosexual white men are of more inherent worth than other people and therefore favor social constructs that privilege heterosexual white men at the expense of everyone else. After all, social institutions have no inherent meaning; they are just tools for distributing power and privilege.”